No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Millions of men are crazy to sleep with virgins. They marry children because children are most likely to be virgins. Men go to brothels and pay a lot of money only to fuck 5 to 10-year-old children. Men love hymen that surrounds or partially covers the external vaginal opening.

The man who created Islam knew about the desire of men to have sex with virgins. He tempted men whoever convert to Islam with seventy two virgins.

In some parts of the world a white bed sheet is put on the bed to see virgin’s blood on the first night of wedding. Women are forced to give proof of their chastity. Female ‘purity’ is an asset for patriarchy.Unfortunately their Purity, chastity, virginity, morality all are made available nowhere but in vagina. Women get divorced or tortured or even murdered if their hymens are not intact on wedding night.

Women were forced to wear chastity belts in medieval times.

They do not wear chastity belts made of Iron anymore. Today’s chastity belts are made of different or they are just invisible. There is no change in the mindset of controlling women. Male domination or patriarchy has reduced women the half of the world’s human population to mere sex objects.

Hymens can be broken because of physical exercises, tampons, traumas etc. But men are not ready to accept any torn hymen. Women have to give their husbands or masters or lords the proof of their virginity. Before wedding, out of fear women rush to doctors for having hymenoplasty or hymenorrhaphy. Women’s dignity and honor are based on whether or not their hymens are intact.

Women’s sexuality has never been a private thing. It has always been the property of men and society. They throws stones towards women if their hymens are broken.

Women are also forced to have a hymenoplasty to tighten vagina so that men can feel that they are having sex with teens or children. Doctors are now becoming expert in tightening vagina or restoring virginity. Women have been taught for centuries not to have respect for themselves. They are taught to hate their own bodies. They are taught to live for men and men only.

What if women did not have but men had hymens covering their penises! Men would face no problems if men’s hymens were broken because of horse back riding or masturbation or sex or something else. Would women ever ask men to give proof of their virginity? No. Rupturing hymens would be a man’s proof of masculinity. Men would be treated as uncouth and retard if their hymens remained intact after puberty.

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We fought against patriarchy and religion for our sexual freedom. We now fight against multi-billion dollar sex industries to stop sexual exploitation of women. We fought against religion for our abortion rights. We now fight against misogynistic patriarchal societies to stop sex-selective abortion. It seems it is a never-ending fight.

We know at birth boys outnumber girls, there are 105 or 106 male children for every 100 female children. But later women outnumber men because women are more resistant to disease, and tend to live longer than men even if men and women receive similar nutritional and medical attention and general health care. India and China are having skewed sex ratio at birth. In some places of India there are even less than 700girls for 1000 boys.

Abortion is legal, but sex-selective abortion is not legal in India. Some people have tried to talk about law. Those women who have killed their own female fetuses, cried out, ‘law, what is law? Will the law come to my aid when my husband throws me out of the house or kills me for giving birth to yet another girl! Will the law help me when my husband marries again in the hope of a son? Can the law change the way society looks at me because I have no son! ‘

If the woman cannot provide a son, her life is torn asunder by strife. To put it bluntly, the message flashed by society – and this is what people really think, no matter what they say – is that, if you have two sons, you have two eyes. If you have one son, you are blind in one eye. And if you have two daughters, you are completely blind.

The women who support female feticide also say, ‘why should we let them live? We do not want any girl. Should we let girls be born so that they suffer the way we are suffering? They say, what good does being alive do to us? It is better that an insufferable life ends before it can begin. It is better to go straight to heaven than stay alive and endure the kicks and blows of the world.’ Are they wrong in saying this?

Once upon a time, people in patriarchal society would run temple to temple and pray to god for a son, they would spend extravagantly on saints and hermits, but now there is no need of magic charms and spells, a medium even stronger than god has come to India – science. Scan machines, amniocentesis and other scientific tests reveal the sex of the embryo in the womb – if the sex is not right then it is got rid of. The right sex is masculine, the wrong sex feminine. The healthy sex is masculine, the disabled sex feminine.

Girls are quickly disappearing. Anti-women traditions have been carefully preserved over the ages. There are quite a few communities, which regard sons as only offspring, and not daughters. Till 1980, infant girls used to be killed after they were born. Feticide had not caught on. Despite being banned, the incidence of feticide is on the rise. It makes one afraid that as long as the status of girls in society does not improve, there is no way these murders, this bloodshed, can be prevented.

We say, if women are educated and self-reliant, then female infanticide and female feticide will stop. Most people believe that these occur among the poor and the uneducated. But, in fact, the opposite is true. The study shows in India the ratio of girls to boys is the most skewed in South Delhi, a place where the rich and the educated live. It is here that the maximum number of girls go missing. Down from 904 to 845 in just 10 years. 24,000 girls disappear from South Delhi every year. The Patels of Gujarat are a wonder. Traditionally rich peasants, there is no trace of girls in their villages. It’s femicide, the systematic killing of women. A holocaust going on against girls across the country. A pogrom.

Sometimes I think ‘educated’ people can plan the murder of their fetuses with much more skill than uneducated people. ‘Educated’ girls can learn patriarchal system much better than uneducated girls. They sure have better learning ability. They even practice it better. Misogyny can not be wiped out through conventional education that does not teach gender equality.

Since infant girls have been murdered over the ages, female feticide today does not go against anti-women tradition. It is like weeding – plucking off girls from the soil of the womb reserved for the production of sons. There is nothing surprising about murdering daughters in a race that has always been thirsty for sons. Killing of girl children was probably in vogue from the ancient Vedic age. The Atharva Veda says, Let girls be born elsewhere, let boys take birth here. Son is wealth. Son is a blessing. The son will be the father’s strength in old age. The father will go to heaven if the son lights his funeral pyre. It is the son who will rescue the father from hell.

Female feticide is causing social imbalance. Now brothers share a wife. The murder of girls has led to such an acute shortage of girls that an exchange system has been initiated. According to this system, parents agree to give their daughter in marriage on the condition that the groom’s sister marries the bride’s brother. “Bride Trafficking” has started. Men are now ‘recycling’ the use of women for sex and reproduction.

Now a days men want educated wives. So girls are getting educated so that they can sell well in the marriage mart. An educated wife can do the shopping, pay the bills, look after the children’s studies, and solve problems at school, all on her own. A man said, my wife has a postgraduate degree in Maths, all the better since she can help the kids with the homework. So I don’t need to engage a tutor for them. And why should my wife work outside the home? We don’t need any extra money in the family. She has a lot to do at home.

The money women earn is known as extra money. University degrees are meant to help the kids with their homework, nothing else. The norm is that middle class girls will not work after marriage.Only those girls, who badly need money for survival or those girls whose money husbands want, get permission to work outside the house.

Alas! So much for education! Educated girls have to pay more dowry. The more educated a girl is, the more educated husband she demands. And thus the amount of dowry required also escalates. Many people think that a handsome dowry enhances the dignity of the girl. However, dowry never improves the status of a girl in her in-laws’ house, rather it results in loss of dignity. The more dowry is paid, the more the girl’s status at her in-laws will deteriorate. The husband is not supposed to pay dowry, no matter how educated the girl is, no matter how grand the job she holds. The ‘Brides Wanted’ column is clear testimony to the value of girls in this society. Wanted: A fair complexion, beautiful, educated, homely girl from a respectable family. ‘Homely girl’ means a girl who will spend all 24 hours of the day on domestic chores, one who will not hold a job. ‘Respectable family’ means a family that will pay a handsome dowry. If the groom comes from an affluent family, it does not mean that a poor dowry will do, rather the dowry must be all the more generous. When this is the condition, why will people not believe that the birth of a girl means entails huge expenses! Girls are an inferior race – this belief is ingrained in both men and women across India. And since a girl belongs to an inferior race, dowry is needed to get rid of her.

The abortion clinics display an advertisement. Spend Rs 500, you’ll save Rs. 50,000. In other words, kill this one. If this one lives, you’ll lose Rs. 50,000 in dowry. For those yearning for a son, the sex determination clinics are modern temples.

Women have had to struggle for decades for the right of abortion. Acquiring the right of abortion was a huge event in the history of women’s emancipation. However, when in India, a foetus is aborted by virtue of belonging to a certain gender, and that gender is the feminine gender, then such abortion has no relation whatsoever with women’s liberty, but is inseparably related with the tragedy of women’s subjugation.

The law has not been able to eradicate the dowry system. It can never be eradicated as long as every member of the family continues to believe that a girl cannot be as economically powerful as a boy. Society needs a lot of change. Society must understand that girls are very important members of the society, not burdens for whom dowry must be paid, not machines for the production of sons. If women and men do not unite in the attempt to transform society, female feticide will continue unabated.

This society is not a fit place for girls, so it is better not to allow them to be born. This logic is something like this: there is too much shouting and screaming all around, the noise pollution is giving one a headache, so it is better to chop off the head. Many claim that if women themselves choose the gender of the child before giving birth, then they will be saved from many undesired pregnancies. How helpless she must be not to have the slightest control over the fetus growing inside her womb! Women are compelled to yield to societal as well as many kinds of family pressure and opt for abort a female fetus. An undesired pregnancy is not as terrible as this forsaken, helpless, undignified, disgraceful condition of women.

If the practice of female feticide continues as they are now, it will not be very many decades before there will be not a single girl in the country, only men. The good thing will be that men will find no more girls to torture, trample, rape and kill.

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Women-haters beat their wives. Patriarchal culture and customs allow wife beating. Almost all religions, monotheistic or polytheistic, advise women to be submissive.

In Muslim countries wife beating manuals have been always selling well. But recently an ordinary wife beating manual, ”A Gift For Muslim Couple” caught the attention of media because it was selling in Canada, where domestic violence is considered a crime.

It is a manual to control, restrain, scold, and beat wives into submission to create a happy, healthy, and satisfying marriage; a marriage to last a lifetime.The book says, research has shown men are looking for successful methods to achieve a happy satisfying life long marriage. Absolute control of and submission by their wives is the key.

‘There are many lessons in this book–

The necessity “to restrain the wife with strength or even to threaten her.”

“How the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes.”

The absolute rights of the husband, which include his wife’s inability to leave “his house without his permission,” and that his wife must “fulfill his desires” and “not allow herself to be untidy … but should beautify herself for him. (‘She cannot leave the husband’s house without his permission./She should not refuse when he calls her for intercourse /She should not call him by his first name when calling him.’ page 45)

How a husband should scold her, to use harsh words, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull her by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”

People who demand banning of the books that criticize religion do not say a word against the book that advises men to beat their disobedient wives. The book advocates domestic violence in order to attain a life long happy marriage.

Moderate Muslims are angry. They condemn the book for inciting violence against women. They even demand ban on the book.

The book is 100 years old. Maulavi Ashraf Ali Thanvi, the author of the book died in 1943. I like old books about prophets and religions written by early biographers and scholars. They did not try to whitewash the anti women or the anti science parts of religious scriptures or did not try to hide prophet’s dirty linen under the carpet. Today’s scholars or religious apologists interpret the ‘holy texts’ as if the author of the texts is a rational, modern,scientific and humane. They try hard to make god sounds like an advocate for equality and justice rather than an ignorant and misogynist. They do it because in the 21st century it is not politically correct to treat women as inferior beings or slaves. Religion and superstition remain where they were, only the tips and tricks for making people fool have been changing over time.

If people who believe in equality between men and women think that ”A gift for Muslim couple’ is 100 years old and it is out of time and out of place and it should be banned, then what about the book which is 1400 years old and which also asks men to beat their disobedient wives (Surah Nisa 4.34) and incite violence against women! Anybody thought of banning the Quran as well as other misogynistic religious scriptures?

I am against banning books. I want people to learn what really the religious scriptures say, how barbaric, inhuman, hateful and misogynistic those texts are! In the meantime let’s try to prevent the apologists of religion from whitewashing religion’s justification for domestic abuse and encourage people to have a scientific outlook.

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‘A Sri Lankan woman is facing decapitation with a sword on a witchcraft charge in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi man said that his 13-year-old daughter suddenly started acting strange after seeing a Sri Lankan woman in a shopping mall. The Sri Lankan woman was accused of casting a spell on his daughter. Police arrested the woman. The punishment for practicing witchcraft and sorcery in Saudi Arabia is, beheading. Two persons were beheaded on witchcraft charges last year. Sharia, or Islamic law, is the basis of the legal system in Saudi Arabia The number of execution is increasing in the country. In 2010, 26 people were executed. In 2011, it was 76.’

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”Religion is like a penis. It’s fine to have one and it’s fine to be proud of it, but please don’t whip it out in public and start waving it around… and PLEASE don’t try to shove it down my child’s throat.”

Taliban poisons drinking water. 150 schoolgirls were hospitalized in Afghanistan yesterday. Girls education was banned under Taliban rule (1996-2001). After girls schools are reopened, periodic attacks occur against girls, teachers and school buildings. It is not the first time Taliban poisoned girl’s school’s water, they did it before. In 2010, more than 100 schoolgirls and teachers were sickened in similar poisonings.

Taliban’s poison gas attack is well known. In August 2010 it was revealed through blood tests that a mysterious series of cases of mass sickness at girls’ schools across the country were caused by a powerful poison gas.

“Female education is against Islamic teachings and spreads vulgarity in society,” Shah Dauran, Taliban leader said. Muslim Khan, Taliban spokesman said, “Female education is against Islam. They (women and girls) are required to sit at home and not venture out.”

The relationship between religion and patriarchy is deep-rooted. Patriarchy wants woman to stay at home and to protect her chastity. A woman is nothing but her husband’s property. It is men’s responsibility to provide food for his wives and children and it is women’s duty to obey her husband. It is only recently after decades of feminist movement that women get the opportunity to go to school, to get an education, to find a job, to make money and to become economically independent.

Whenever Muslim fundamentalists flog women for wearing trousers or stone women to death for adultery,or punish girls for getting education, there are people who would say, ‘it is not real Islam’. What is real Islam? Does real Islam believe in women’s equality? Is real Islam pro-woman? If real Islam is so pro-woman, it would not have said woman was made from the rib of man(Surah Nisa 4:1) or one of her bones was crooked. If real Islam is so pro-woman, it would not ask men to beat women.( Surah Nisa 4:34) If real Islam is so pro-woman, it would not say, a male shall inherit twice as much as a female ( Surah Nisa 4:11) , and the testimony of one man would not be equal that of two women. If real Islam is so pro-woman, women would get equal rights in marriage, divorce, and child custody, it would not permit men to have four wives (Surah Nisa 4:3) and it would not reward pious men with 72 virgins in heaven and pious women with nothing but the same old husband.

The life of Khadija, the first wife of Muhammad, tells us that the status of women was quite good during pre-Islamic period. Khadija was a rich businesswoman. Women could own and run a business. She was a widow. She married Muhammad who was 15 years younger than her. She had the right to hold and inherit property and was free to enter into a nuptial contract with the person she chose. Her polygamous husband could not marry any other women as long as she was alive.

It is true that Islam is not against women having ‘religious education’ but it definitely discourages women to leave home. It says, woman’s pray at home is better than going to mosque. Woman should take the permission of her husband before going out. Evils are behind unnecessary socializing of unveiled women . Woman should not wear perfumes. Women should wait behind men. Women should not walk in the middle of the road. Wives have great duty towards their husbands. Angels curses the disobedient wife. Woman should be grateful to her husband. Women should not imitate men in dress, movements, and way of speech. Women should cover her face in the presence of strangers and men who are not her close family members.

Despite all the attacks of the religionists, women in the Muslim societies are leaving home for schools or for work, it happens not because they embrace Islamic rules, but because they disrespect Islamic rules. Like all other religions, Islam is also anti-women. Today, Islam looks more intolerant and barbaric than other religions. It is because Islamists have been preventing people from being evolved and enlightened. Time to change.

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‘The right to life of women … is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions.’ — Hina Jilani

‘It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders – of the women beheaded, burned to death, stoned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the “honor” of their families – are as barbaric as they are shameful.’

‘An honor killing is a murder, carried out by a family to punish a female family member who has supposedly brought dishonor upon the family. The acts which are the cause of dishonor can be

refusing to enter into an arranged marriage

being the victim of a sexual assault or rape

seeking a divorce, even from an abusive husband

committing adultery or fornication

pre-marital sex

falling in love with men outside her tribe

flirting /chatting with men on facebook

The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a way that dishonors her family is enough to trigger an attack on her life.’

‘Men often use honor killings to maintain their dominant patriarchal status. Women in the family often support the practice in order to preserve the honor of male family members. Patriarchy is a system in which both men and women participate. It privileges the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women.’

‘Honor killing most likely originates from the belief that a woman’s chastity is the property of her families, a patriarchal culture that comes from ancient Assyrian tribes of 1200 B.C. A woman, who was considered by the tribes to be a machine for making men, was forced through honor killing to obey the husband’s family and not to reproduce outside of the tribe or the extended family. In Babylonian societies, women accused of adultery were forced to throw themselves into a river to prove they were innocent. In ancient Egyptian culture, imprisonment, flogging, or mutilation were common punishments for women who had been convicted of adultery. In ancient Chinese culture husbands cut off the hair of adulterous women and then lead them to their death by an elephant trained to kill. Some Native American tribes punished adulterous women by cutting off their limbs and mutilating their bodies. In Persia, adulterous women were pushed into a well and left to die. ‘

More than 20,000 women are killed each year because of honor based violence.

‘The practice of honor killings goes across cultures and across religions. It had been practiced in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Morocco, Lebanon,Iraq, Brazil, Ecuador, Uganda etc. In many countries, murdering female family members in the name of honor is NOT considered a crime. In some countries honor killing is like a crime of passion, a crime often not punishable. In Pakistan, the practice of honor killing is supposed to be prosecuted under ordinary killing, but in practice police and prosecutors often ignore it and often a man simply claim the killing was for his honor and he will go free. In Syria, men can kill female relatives in a ‘crime of passion’ as long as it is not premeditated. It is legal for a husband to kill his wife in Jordan if he catches her committing adultery. Crime of passion can be a full or partial defense in countries like Argentina, Iran, Guatemala, Egypt, Israel, Peru, etc.’

Honor killings take place in Western countries (UK, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Canada, USA) among immigrant communities. Rape, acid attack are part of honor crimes.

These are just some informations. Another important information is Honor killing incidents are increasing rapidly all over the world.

There is no honor in killing. But women are still oppressed, tortured and killed everyday in the name of religion, patriarchy, tradition, culture, custom, family honor etc.etc. etc.

Men must stop exploiting, abusing and killing women in the name of hundreds of thousands of bullshit.